In today's filmmaking world extensive and costly efforts are made to produce film sequences that integrate video clips with three-dimensional animation and sound. Weaving video and three-dimensional animation together is a lengthy and cumbersome task involving many stages and re-do's. These re-do's are required to smoothly match the three-dimensional animation to the video sequences in order to create the illusion that the three-dimensional animation is ‘real’, and was actually filmed with the original video sequence. Before filming commences, the area and objects to be filmed are measured to calculate their size and relative position. This information is plotted into an animation program, and an animated version of the scene to be filmed is constructed using an alpha channel in the background. The alpha channel creates a background transparency layer, so that the animated sequence can be placed on an additional layer to the filmed material of the same shot. Once the animated and filmed sequences are matched together, the three-dimensional animated sequence is exported as a sequence in Joint Photographic Experts Group (jpeg) format. This in effect converts the three-dimensional animation sequence into an irreversible two-dimensional format that is used in a video-editing suite. Where sequences do not match, the differences are noted and the animator returns to the originally constructed sequence and the long task of matching the animation to the film clip begins again. Sometimes this is done without achieving optimal results, because of minor discrepancies in any of the filmed or three-dimensional animated segments, or due to financial restrictions of going over budget. Often budget restrictions determine the quality of the final output by limiting the amount of tweaking, remakes, and re-dos.
All this makes the post-production process very expensive. In addition, owing to the nature of the process the quality and success of the movie or clip cannot be assessed until the final output form has been produced, that is until the movie or clip is finished. This means that in all instances, sections of work must be repeated to attain the desired outcome. This further increases the costs involved in producing movies or clips that use sound, video and three-dimensional animation together as one.
The techniques used to produce and record sound, video, and animation were developed at separate points in time over the last century. The result being that they each have unique means of production and independent output formats—each format being incompatible with the other. The inclusion of all three media elements in a single output media demands that a series of post production professionals undertake complicated and time consuming techniques and processes. As a result the quality and success of the movie or clip cannot be assessed until the final output form has been produced, i.e. until the movie or clip is finished. It is very rare that an acceptable movie sequence or clip is produced after the first attempt at rendering. In almost all cases, sections of work must be redone to attain the desired outcome. Such repetition increases the costs involved in producing movies or clips that use sound video and animation together.
In broad technical terms these limitations arise since the video is a linear frame-based format, within which time is limited to a set frame rate, and object size is fixed within a video sequence. On the other hand, animation is a vector algorithm within which time is a relative quantity, and object size is not fixed. Objects within animation sequences can be enlarged or reduced in size, sped up or slowed down without restriction. As animation has become an integral part of the film making process there is a need to fuse video and three-dimensional animated sequences within two-dimensional film shots despite the inherent conflicts between the nature of two-dimensional Video and three-dimensional Animation. The use of video editing suites in conjunction with animation and sound programs, while taking into account all of their different formats, transfer protocols, and limitations, has become a complicated process, that often detracts from the goal of making a movie.
There is therefore a need for a solution to the above-mentioned problems. Current day solutions are based on bundling a collection of tools together—each tool providing a partial answer to the problem. Editors and post production engineers must still struggle with a series of processes and tools in order to work. Thus the need for a single platform for seamlessly integrating video, animation and sound still remains. Preferably, such a solution should consider the movie making process from the point of view of the director of the movie.